Writing at a Moving Target

We’ve all heard the phrase, “Life is a moving target.” If nothing else, it’s been made pretty famous by a store of a certain name. I wish, though, that it wasn’t moving so fast. I wish it would stop, especially when it comes to my writing.

For a brief time, I thought I had a handle on this whole writing lifestyle. Then my oldest daughter was born five years ago today and she threw my life on its head.

I eventually found a new, though slightly more difficult rhythm. (I’m not a morning person, so those 5 a.m. writing sessions were a real bear.) After a matter of a few months, a combination of morning sickness and other ill health again threw things off-kilter. I can’t say I’ll never recover, but I haven’t yet.

I also can’t say I haven’t written anything. As editor of a weekly paper, I routinely write interviews and other features. As a writer, though, my heart and soul have always belonged to fiction. I haven’t touched that since months before the birth of my 21-month-old son. That’s too long.

I wouldn’t trade my children for anything, not even Stephen King’s career. Now, as I write this post, though, I try to block out the movie my five-year-old is watching (The Sword in the Stone if anyone’s interested)…and my toddler’s insistent (try throwing an empty bowl at my head) request for a fifth Cutie…and my two-month-old’s increasingly strident cries. I try to focus and wonder when the target will quit moving. Then I have to face the fact that it never will.

The target will never stop moving. Life will never be perfect. The kids will grow up and something else will happen to take my attention. So, if I want to be a writer, I have to become a sharpshooter and try to hit that target no matter how fast it’s moving or how much it zigzags. I just have to figure out how.

How do you write when your life is a moving target?

Some of the things that keep my life a moving target.

My Name is Andrea, and I’m a Write-a-holic

Caveat: True addictions are a serious issue, and I have no desire to make light of addicts or the struggles they and their families face. This topic is purely for the sake of analogy.

The other day, I overheard my father confide to someone that he thinks my mother has a reading addiction. After all, seven books in one month is beyond the realm of reasonable consumption.

Fortunately, I’m pretty certain reading is a non-lethal addiction. If it weren’t, I’d have ODed a long time ago. His comment did get me pondering another topic I’d already been noodling.

Is writing a drug?

No, it’s not. Not according to the obvious definition, anyway. But is it addictive?

Yes, I think so.

I’m no doctor or counselor, but I know some of the basics of addiction. Based on my limited knowledge, let’s look at some of them.

Addictions don’t usually happen overnight.
A strong addiction requires repeated exposure to the substance or behavior in order to take hold. This may take a few days to several months, depending on the individual, but most don’t develop addictions after trying something only once. They simply like it enough to try it again…and again…until they’re hooked.

You don’t become a serious writer overnight. You have to try it, like it, and try it some more until it gets under your skin.

When you’re addicted to something, you can’t get enough.
An addiction demands increasing doses for a diminishing return. The less you do, the weaker the hold the activity has over you. The more you do, the more you want.

I can’t speak for other writers, but this is how it is for me: the longer I let my writing sit unvisited, the less desire I have to pick it up again. The more I write, the more I want to write. The more I write, the more it consumes my thoughts, firing my brain with ideas until I have to sit down and put them to words.

Decreased use can lead to a life without the addictive behavior, but you always have to be careful.
You can cut an addiction from your life through rehabilitation or new learned behaviors. At the same time, you need to be careful about exposing yourself to the behavior in the future, or you’ll probably fall into the same patterns again.

As I said, the less I write, the less I want to write. It doesn’t take all that long before I’m almost comfortable not writing at all. Almost. As with all true addictions, it only takes a taste to stir the old passions and fire up those receptors. A true writing addict never “used to be a writer.” At best, you may be a “writer in recovery.”

Sure, my analogy has its limitations. True addictions are destructive to addicts’ lives on mental, physical, emotional and relational levels. With the exceptions of writers like Poe and Hemingway, most writers I know about are pretty balanced…except for that niggling little desire to pick up a pen or pluck at a keyboard. Few writers let their craft destroy their families, their social lives or their non-writing careers.

Here’s my point, though. Unlike most behaviors, writing is something to which it actually helps to be a little addicted. The road to publication is tough, it’s lonely and it’s often unrewarding. If you don’t have an inner drive, a desire for the art for its own sake, it can be easy to give up. I for one, could stand a little more addiction to my writing (and a little less addiction to sugar and chocolate, but that’s a separate topic). Anyone else feel like forming an addiction?

Are You Committed...or Should You Be?

In my last post, I mentioned time’s ability to change absolutely nothing…at least, not unless accompanied by some kind of effort or forward motion on our part. I now realize I left out an important component.

Commitment.

How committed are you to your writing career? Committed enough to get up at 5:30 in the morning to glean an hour or two before the kids or hubby get up? Committed enough to put down the how-tos and actually write? Committed enough to risk rejection by sending that writing to an editor? Committed enough to…

You get the idea.

For years, I didn’t have that level of commitment. It was far easier to work an eight-to-five I loathed than to risk my mortgage by gambling on my talent and self-discipline. Far easier to plop on the couch after work and turn on the TV “just for a few minutes.” Far easier to give in to exhaustion and hit the snooze button every morning. Far easier to go to lunch with coworkers (wet or otherwise) instead of spending the time researching markets or writing for them.

It wasn’t talent I was lacking. That sounds arrogant, but it’s not. Moderate talent combined with hard work and endurance can survive in the writing business. Dozens of published articles and books prove that (okay, just my opinion). It wasn’t self-discipline I lacked. Not completely, anyway. I grew up on a farm, and I’ve spent much of my life getting work done without supervision. No, I lacked commitment. Committing to my writing career felt like stepping off a ten-story cliff, and I wasn’t ready to do that.

In this week’s The Prosperous Writer newsletter, Christina Katz compared the writing life to a relationship. True, and more. For me, making marriage vows to my husband of almost eight years was the easier of the two commitments, even though I’d known my writing habit at least ten years longer. In a way, that’s understandable. Committing to another person only requires faith in them; committing to a career in writing takes faith in yourself. I’ve never been good at that.

Commitment takes courage. Commitment takes faith. And, once you’ve taken that ten-story leap, commitment takes the daily struggle to work through disappointment, to find points of compromise, to turn around and send that query out again instead of running back to the retreats where you used to find solace. Remember Jane Kirkpatrick’s definition of commitment as a banking term? “To make a deposit against which you can later draw.” Commitment means showing up, day after day, to put your pen to paper, fingers to keys, and an investment into your life.

So, before you can put the time into writing, you need to commit to your writing. Only you know how much of a commitment you can make. The level isn’t the same for everyone, because everyone’s dream is different. Without that promise, though, you never will find the time. Not consistently and not for long enough to matter. Until you commit, your writing is only a dream. And you can’t take that to the bank.